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Meet Oat Montien, artist-in-residence
9th July 2022, 2:36 pm
Oat Montien
“I was born in Bangkok’s Donmaung area in 1989. Just like other near-airport suburbs it always has brothels to accommodate lonesome travellers. My mother happened to run one; a very successful venture with more than 50 sex workers at its peak. Every last Friday of the month we would host a themed party during which I was designated to take on a very special duty: spotlights operator for the erotic shows. My mother would tell me, “Never use green light because the girls will look like ghouls, neither white light because they would look too real”. It sparked the beginning of my fascination with how lights tell stories as they illuminate human flesh. This fascination was celebrated in the life drawing classes at my art school and I’ve been drawing nudes ever since.
“After graduating I started to teach life drawing at my studio. However my sessions were not very conventional. I primarily used drawing as a tool to investigate Queer desire to create an environment of intimacy and liberation. I would incorporate various artifices such as pranayama breathing techniques, sounds from NASA, poetry reading from Oscar Wilde, AA Bronson as well as my own prose, even projection of vintage porn onto the models. These coveted sessions became quite popular and eventually evolved into participatory performances for Thailand’s most prestigious institutions: the Museum of Natural History (Chulalongkorn University) National Library Bangkok CityCity Gallery RiverCity Bangkok and many more.
“Recently, I worked for Patpong Museum – one of the rare institutions to focus on Thailand’s sex industry and its history. They offered a collaboration with sex workers as models for my class. Beyond this full-circle moment linking my childhood to practice it also inspired me to further explore explicit homoeroticism and queer anthropology within my drawings as well as my practice. My current drawing project revolves around immigrant gay sex workers during Covid-19 pandemic.
“In 2020 I founded “Boddhisattava LGBTQ+ Gallery” Thailand’s first art space exclusive for South-East Asia queer artists and creators.
-Oat Montien, 2022
Artists Oat Montien and Xiaobing Fan at TOM House
Oat Montien | TOM House Exit Interview
Durk Dehner interviews Fall 2022 artist-in-residence Oat Montien about time spent at TOM House.
OAT MONTIEN “Yellow Fever”
5th Jan 2023 – 14th Jan 2023 @ All Day – 6th-14th BY APPOINTMENT +1 213 250 1685 Tom of Finland Foundation presents the final exhibition of work from Oat Montien, current ToFF Artist-in-Residence. Join us on Thursday to see some of the artwork created during his stay at TOM House. “TOM House has been a safe environment for connection, intimacy, and camaraderie with my fellow […]
Life Drawing with Oat Montien | 5th November
As part of TOM’s Weekend for Palm Springs Pride, Thai illustrator, writer and Tom of Finland Foundation Artist-in-Residence Oat Montien leads a life drawing workshop with the iconic model Terry Miller. TERRY MILLER Oat began to teach life drawing classes from his studio focusing on drawing as a tool to investigate Queer desire to… View Article
OAT MONTIEN “The Sailor”
21st Jul 2022 – 14th Aug 2022 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm – Highlighting the power of sexual attraction in the realm of Southeast Asian masculinity. This series of work by Oat Montien was made at TOM House where he had access to Tom’s preparatory sketches. The loose unfinished lines contrast with the refined details that Tom is known for, and became […]
Our residents at the Festival
Foundation hosts erotic artists from around the world who live at TOM House for a three month period, providing them support and access to extensive source material for artistic inspiration, culminating is a public presentation. “With my contempt for self-marketing, I refuse to work with plans, and my most often-used sentence in any… View Article
Tom of Finland Foundation Artist-in-Residence Program 2022
We are very excited to announce this year’s artists for the Tom of Finland Residency program. For everyone who applied to the program, we always encourage every artist to reapply in the future. WINTER James Davison (United Kingdom) SPRING Pawel Zukowski (Poland) Basil Twist (New York City) SUMMER Xiaobing Fan (China) FALL Oat Montien… View Article
Published: 9th July 2022
Tags: Artist-in-Residence, Oat Montien